Note: Tommy Gainey earned his PGA Tour card Dec. 3 at PGA Tour Q-School. This column appeared in the May 12 edition of Golfweek
.CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Anyone who is anyone was at the Wachovia Championship, the Tour stop every other event longs to be. Each spring, like fine detergent, the Wachovia emerges new and improved, a blooming U.S. Open meets the Deep South love affair.
And last week the Quail Hollow Club boasted its mightiest roster of A-list celebrities.
Tiger Woods was here. Michael Jordan. Phil Mickelson. Peyton Manning. NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson. And of course, Tommy Gainey.
He’s the Tiger Woods of the Tarheel Tour, a 31-year-old GOB (good ol’ boy) from Bishopville, a tiny speck of a town northeast of Columbia, S.C. (“Three stoplights and you’ve missed it,” he says in a drawl as Southern as fried pickles). Gainey got into the Wachovia via not one, but two qualifiers, making nine birdies (and two doubles) on a Monday qualifying course (Firethorne CC) that’s stronger than Carolina brisket.
As they say in Beverly Hills, “Next thing you know, ’ol Jed’s a millionaire.” By late Monday, Gainey was at Quail Hollow getting “registrated,” and swapping his well-worn Nissan Altima for a sleek courtesy Mercedes SUV. He could get used to this.
The Mercedes was a nice ride, but Gainey says he’ll probably go a different route once he hits it big, as he fully expects to.
“Nothin’ against the foreign industry or all the foreigners – I believe in respecting everybody, because everybody’s different but they’re the same, you know? – but I’m just sayin’, I’d rather have something American-made,” he said. “I’m more of a (Chevy) Tahoe guy.”
By Wednesday he was smashing practice balls no more than 20 yards from Tiger himself, enjoying the moment. And Thursday delivered Gainey’s first shot in a Tour event, and half of Bishopville was there to see it. At the very least, his entourage helped supply high-pitched energy and produced a spike in the tournament’s pre-noon Bud sales.
Most know Gainey simply as “Two Gloves,” a hired gun from the deep-woods mini-tours who uses a 10-finger baseball grip and wears gloves on both hands, even when he putts. Anybody who has played Double-A golf and is worth his salt has run into Two Gloves somewhere.
They’ve either played against him on some out-of-the-way circuit or viewed his fledgling TV career on Golf Channel’s “Big Break” series.
Kirk Triplett made his way over to Two Gloves on the practice green and wished him luck. “I’m a ‘Big Break’ addict,” Triplett confessed.
Ask folks about Two Gloves, and here’s the universal description: A simple, humble, yes-sir, no-sir, all-around good guy. Know this: Behind the mighty, self-taught Palmer-like lash – a swing as homemade as pecan pie – lies a talented player who’s trying to summon the confidence to be the Tour’s next Tiger.
OK, maybe the next Boo Weekley.
Gainey guesses he holds “eight or nine” course records around the Carolinas, once shooting 59 at Northwoods CC in Columbia.
Said Two Gloves’ agent, Paul Graham: “Tommy needs to realize he belongs out here. A lot of guys (Tour pros) he’s seen this week have told him that.”
Two Gloves nearly holed his first two iron shots of the day Friday at Wachovia, setting up a birdie-birdie start that got him to even par through 20 holes. Then reality set in and sent him careening down the leaderboard. He shot 74-81 and missed the cut, but just being within spitting distance of the greatest players in the world gave his heart a lift.
“Golf is a game, the best player don’t win every week,” said Two Gloves. “That’s why this game is so fun. Because it’s unpredictable, no matter what the experts say. You don’t see Tiger winning every week. You don’t see Davis Love winning every week. It’s good to see that the young guys are showing the big boys that we’ve got game, too. We’re not afraid to beat you at any given time. It gives me a lot of hope.”
Tooling around in that Mercedes and living in high cotton allowed Gainey to reflect on the road traveled. He went straight from high school to Tech, albeit a different one than David Duval and Stewart Cink attended. He went to Central Carolina Technical College and soon was wrapping insulation on water heater tanks, sometimes wrapping as many as 1,500 a day. As bad (and itchy) as that was, it probably beat his other job: furniture mover.
At the A.O. Smith water heater factory, Gainey made $8.75 an hour, which “wasn’t bad money.” (Wonder what he’d term the $1.1 million Tiger pocketed Sunday?) Ten years ago, a friend put up most of Gainey’s $750 entry fee into a TearDrop Tour event and Two Gloves won it. First pro start. It paid $15,000; Two Gloves had a new vocation.
Along the way he has played the Grand Strand Tour, Hooters Tour, and lately, the Tarheel Tour between cameos on “Big Break IV” in Scotland and “Big Break VII” in Reunion, Fla.
“I don’t think Two Gloves has had his big break yet,” said Boo Weekley. “We all need that break that gets us over the edge, to where we can get out here (on Tour). I don’t think his has come.”
The crew from Bishopville would relish seeing Two Gloves as a Tour regular. They pulled so hard for Gainey at Wachovia that he said he felt just like Tiger.
“And you know,” he said, “it was just me out there, Tommy Gainey. They were yelling and screaming for me. What a wonderful feeling. I can’t wait to experience that again.”
Late Friday, it wasn’t easy to pack up his stuff in that stately locker room at Quail Hollow, his nametag looking so shiny alongside the Garcias and Goosens. He kept the Mercedes until Saturday, then he and his girlfriend hopped in her Saturn and made the two-hour drive home to Bishopville – a town best known for its Lizard Man hoax of 1988, when a teen said a 7-foot, scaled, three-toed creature emerged from some farmer’s field.
“Yeah, even Oprah came to town for that one,” said Two Gloves’ younger brother, Allen.
Two Gloves has too much game to be some one-hit hoax. The Lizard Man he’s not.
“This makes me want to get back into another tournament,” he said Sunday night. “And when I do, I’ll be there for the rest of my life.”
The Tour should be so lucky.
Posted: 12/4/2007
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